The grammar is totally different, so you will get no help there. Knowing Chinese will not help you speak the language either.

When you learn to read, though, your knowledge of the kanji will help a lot. You already know probably 90% of the characters that are in common use in Japanese -- the other 10% will be made of parts that look familiar to you. The meanings will be maybe 60-70% the same. The readings will maybe be 5-10% the same.

It's a persistent myth that Chinese and Japanese people can read each other's writing -- that's definitely not true, but if you know how to read Chinese or Japanese, it's a big advantage in learning to read the other language.

I saw an episode of the NHK "Nihongo dekimasu" where a Chinese kid who was quite advanced in Japanese was saying the easyest thing was Kanji because they were just like Chinese.

Some have said they feel disadvantaged because the Chinese reading comes into their head instead of the Japanese one, but I guess there is no way for them to know who is more disadvantaged, someone who knows how to read Kanji in another language, or someone who doesn't know how to read Kanji at all.

Some studies showed that use of native language did not interfere with language acquisition; rather it was a lack of acquisition (i.e. ignorance of the target language) that led to falling back on native language.

In other words if you feel like you are going through your native language when reading Kanji (or other things), its not because of interference; you just haven't learned enough Japanese yet.

I'd agree. Chinese students I studied with in Japan had a big advantage in the kanji/vocab area, but having Mandarin or Cantonese as a first language doesn't seem to help at all with pronunciation/accent. There is a distinctive 'Chinese' accent in Japanese which is as just as bad (but different to) the usual English-speaking-gaijin accent (mine included )

Last edited by Oracle on Thu 01.31.2008 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My sensei particularly praises the Chinese students (who come from China) from my JP class. He says they are fast learners and speak like Japanese, no Chinese accent.

Mine, on the other hand, has strong English accent. Sensei can’t stand my Japanglish which is a mixture of English and Japanese, whenever I forget the pronunciation, I would just insert the English pronunciation in between words. It indeed fun to see sensei with this expression . I have to admit that Hanzi pronunciation override my mind. Sensei wants me to make improvement in this area.

that´s why I said 日本語で暮らそうではそうだけどね.
Some people says that the korean grammar is similar nihongo..
In fact, when I walk by Bom Retiro(korean neighborhood), I fell like walking by Liberdade(japanese neighborhood) because the pronounciation is so similar that I need to get closer to confirm.

The word was borrowed from Chinese. It depends on how much the Chinese sounds have changed, since the borrowing of the words (and characters) was done a long time ago.

Actually a lot of these 熟語 are invented by the Japanese and taken back into Chinese. The Japanese were the first amongst the 漢字文化圏 to seriously study the works in the Western world. 文化 itself was a clever invention from them.

To answer the original question, it certainly helps in reading, but causes problems in listening. When the Chinese hear a 熟語, they tend to "map" it to a word in the Chinese language rather than try to decipher its meaning. This is a different mechanism and takes slightly longer. Unfortunately Japanese has much fewer syllables than Chinese so the sounds can map to a larger number of kanjis.

Chinese grammar is also completely different from Japanese grammar so it does not help either. You will probably see me making mistakes with がは for ages to come.

Last edited by chchan45 on Wed 04.02.2008 4:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Reading 李香蘭 私の半生

Please note that:
1. English is not my first language.
2. I am not Japanese. I am prone to making mistakes so please point them out if you see any.

Yeah, you're right. According to the Koujien, 図書館 is a Meiji-era word to translate "library" from English -- it was probably then borrowed into Chinese from Japanese. However, this is an unusual word in that the pronunciation is fairly close to the Japanese (another easy example of this is 電話).

More common is words that have some resemblance but are too different to make comprehension automatic. For instance, 汽車 means "car" in Chinese but "steam train" in Japanese, and the pronunciations aren't really that close (qiche vs. kisha).

EDIT: When I show my Chinese friends Japanese stuff, one comment I often get is "Oh, that's what that character means in classical Chinese."

Last edited by Yudan Taiteki on Sat 02.02.2008 12:26 am, edited 1 time in total.